What can I say?

Although much of the time I feel like I'm safe in my little expat bubble over here in China, it is impossible to avoid certain disruptions to a "normal" life. I'm not just talking about tring to find decent napkins or having to pay $7 for a box of American cereal. There are much bigger issues that you run into and make you think "Whoa, I'm in China."

The whole milk catastrophe was one. We had not been drinking the Chinese milk to begin with, but now that the affected brands have disappeared from the shelves, all of the other brands have been bought up, too, and there is no more milk in the supply line to restock the shelves with. The stores are down to soy milk and fresh milk only. Ironically, we had been warned off of the fresh milk when we first got here because it has too many hormones in it. Oh well. I don't know what the hormones do to you, but I hope it's not worse than kidney stones.

I could go on about the health and ethical issues here, but I'm a little nervous about another issue: government censorship. As you may have heard, I cannot view my own website here. I can update it, but I'm not able to go directly to the website to view it like you can back home. We've discovered this is a China problem because whenever Russ travels on business outside the country, he is able to view it. The last couple days we were not able to view this blog, either. It's cleared up today, but we'll see for how long.

Another example came up with our TV channels. Our neighborhood sources its programming from the Phillipines and basically the only channels in English worth watching are International CNN and BBC news, Discovery, Nat Geo, HBO, and Star Movies. We also used to get Nickolodeon (cartoons) and Star World (sitcoms, etc.), but in the last few weeks, these last two channels went black. Then a few days ago we received a notice that these channels are illegal in China and will not be turned back on.

I don't know why it took this long to discover this or why it's happening now. Russ theorizes that they are gradually and methodically closing things down now that the Olympics are over and they don't have to keep up appearances of "openness" anymore.

It is pretty amazing how much the government can control information and make everyone believe what they want them to believe. This is not a very extreme example, but one day a while back, I ran into a Chinese woman who was looking for the bus stop. She had just come from giving a private Chinese lesson at someone's house in our neighborhood so I walked her over to the bus stop and we got to chatting a bit. I mentioned that my kids go to the American School and what a good school it was, etc. She asked if there were many Chinese students there. I told her that only expats can go there - you can only attend if you have a foreign passport. I also mentioned that the school is sponsored by the US State Department and she said (rather indignantly) "Oh, it must be that your government does not want to help the Chinese people so they don't let us go there." Then I gently explained that it was actually the policy of Chinese goverment keeping the locals out. She just said "Oh" with a very pensive, confused look on her face. I could tell she was going to be mulling over that one for a while because, of course, the Chinese are lead to believe that China is always good and right and America is the bad guy.

So take a moment to appreciate our freedom of speech next time you listen to world news or watch something smutty on TV and know that by the time you read this entry, billions of Chinese people may not be able to.